Donnie Darko *SPOILERS*

Warning: this post contains spoilers. If you haven't seen Donnie Darko and you're planning to see it, stop reading.

Well I just saw DD, finally. It was an ok movie. borderline good, but not great. It was good in a sense that it made you think, very hard. It was also interesting that there's no way to understand the movie without going through the website, as there are new info, vital to understanding the movie, contained in the website. This is novel, which makes it rather cool.

But I think it's also the reason the movie isn't great. Cuz if you don't know that you should check out the site, then there's no chance you can understand what the HELL went on in that movie. Also, MOST of the confusion about this movie arises not because it's hard to understand, but because there are vital information left out of the movie, and you are only to discover them from other sources, which in my opinion is not a very elegant way.

It's like, "Look ma, I made a movie no one will understand, Cuz I didn't tell show them this ..." The art in making a thought provoking and difficult-to-understand movie (like the Butterfly Effect), is to have it contain ALL the information, yet still be complex enough to make you think about it for hours before you get what happened. Leaving out clues from the movie and thus making it confusing doens't require much talent.

The most unforgiveable, I think, is the fact that we are never shown how Donnie "tears off" the engine from the plane, at the end. There are no clear clues in the whole movie that he has supernatural powers either. (there's only the axe in the school statues head, which is not terribly supernatural, and the little conversation between Donnie and the girl, where the girl says your name sounds like a superhero's and Donnie jokes, "what makes you think I'm not one?").

It is only by listening to the director's commentary on DVD, where he says "Oh and Donnie rips off the engine there (!!!!!!)" that you are to know what happened. Otherwise he's just sitting on the hill at the end, watching the engine fall off. And the fact that he did have supernatural powers to tear the engine off is even more ridiculous, while in the whole movie there was no manifest of his powers. Also, all the "living manipulators" and the "dead manipulators" or whatever, is only mentioned in the book on the website, and without it the movie doens't make a lot of sense.

Anyway, a decent attempt, solid acting, mediocre soundtrack, and a relatively simple storyline after you do all the reading. It is by far one of the better films that I have seen, but still lacks the punch to be called a true masterpiece. One funny thing is that when I read some of the reviews after watching the movie, it was funny how a lot of the reviewers who had obvioulsy not checked out the website, did not have a clue about what went on, and it's really funny to write a "review" about a movie when you didn't really understand it. Again, this reliance on external sources is a major weakness.